Alarmed

A character who senses trouble: it shifts away to one side, tilts, holds its arms out, and every few seconds flinches.

A cartoon person with both arms held out and down, standing a little to one side and tilted, and a dog beside it, both lifted slightly off the grass.

Use it in a cartoon Open it in the block editor The pack file (JSON)

What it is for

Alarmed fits a character who is uneasy: hearing a noise in the dark, watching someone carry a wobbling stack of plates, waiting to see if the dog will bite. It is calmer than a full fright, so it can last through several lines of dialogue. The flinch every few seconds keeps the tension alive; time a scary line to land on a flinch and the reaction looks deliberate.

The principle it shows: timing

The flinch is a lesson in timing. It comes from a wave raised to the power of 6, which keeps it near zero almost all the time and then makes it spike: for a moment the body drops 8 pixels and squashes 6%, then it is gone. A twitch that is short and rare startles; the same movement spread evenly over time would look like a gentle bob. The rest of the move is slow and steady, so the flinch stands out.

The program, line by line

when it starts
  abssin wave on dy · w 2.5 · amp -10
  possin wave on dy · w 1.7 · amp 8 · power 6
  sin wave on dx · w 1.3 · amp 6 · offset -20
  sin wave on rot · w 1.1 · amp 2 · offset -4
  sin wave on sx · w 2.5 · amp -0.01
  sin wave on sy · w 2.5 · amp 0.015
  possin wave on sy · w 1.7 · amp -0.06 · power 6
  sin wave on left arm · w 4 · amp 6 · offset -32
  sin wave on right arm · w 4 · amp -6 · offset 32

when it starts — begins when the move is put on a character.
abssin wave on dy · w 2.5 · amp -10 — small nervous lifts of 10 pixels, about every 1.3 seconds.
possin wave on dy · w 1.7 · amp 8 · power 6 — the flinch. possin keeps only the positive half of a sine wave; raising it to the power of 6 squeezes that half into a narrow spike. Every 3.7 seconds the body drops 8 pixels for a fraction of a second.
sin wave on dx · w 1.3 · amp 6 · offset -20 — the body is held 20 pixels to one side and drifts 6 pixels around there.
sin wave on rot · w 1.1 · amp 2 · offset -4 — tilted 4 degrees and rocking 2 degrees around that.
sin wave on sx · w 2.5 · amp -0.01 and sin wave on sy · w 2.5 · amp 0.015 — a small breath of width and height.
possin wave on sy · w 1.7 · amp -0.06 · power 6 — at the same moment as the flinch, the height squashes 6%.
sin wave on left arm · w 4 · amp 6 · offset -32 and the mirrored right-arm line — the arms held 32 degrees out from the body, wobbling 6 degrees.

Try this

Lower the flinch's power from 6 to 2. The sharp twitch becomes a long, slow dip, and the character looks seasick instead of jumpy, a good way to see what the power of a wave does.
In the program: wave · pow 6 → 2
Move the lean-away from 20 pixels to 60. The character now edges a long way off to one side, as if it wanted to get as far as it can from whatever is there.
In the program: wave · offset -20 → -60

How it differs from Cower

Cower is pure fright: the arms higher (46 degrees), the body shorter, and a fast tremble that never stops. Alarmed is the wary stage before or after it, with a steady lean-away and a single sharp flinch every few seconds.

Works on

Worked out by the build: it plays the move in the engine on each body and checks what moves on screen. Nobody types this table.
Body	Moves?	What moves
2 legs (a person)	yes	whole body, arms
4 legs (a dog)	yes	whole body, front legs
no legs (the monster with no legs)	yes	whole body, arms

c4c:beh:react · version 1.0.0 · CC0 (public domain) · by Jabbertoon